Chapter 12

“You oughtn't to slip up an' s-startle a lady that-a-way,” she said with grave rebuke, and Hale looked humbled. “Now you just set there and wait till I come back.”

“No--no--I want you to stay just as you are.”

“Honest?”

Hale gravely crossed heart and body and June gave out a happy little laugh--for he had caught that gesture--a favourite one--from her. Then suddenly:

“How long?” She was thinking of what Dave said, but the subtle twist in her meaning passed Hale by. He raised his eyes to the sun and June shook her head.

“You got to go home 'fore sundown.”

She dropped her hoe and came over toward him.

“Whut you doin' with them--those weeds?”

“Going to plant 'em in our garden.” Hale had got a theory from a garden-book that the humble burdock, pig-weed and other lowly plants were good for ornamental effect, and he wanted to experiment, but June gave a shrill whoop and fell to scornful laughter. Then she snatched the weeds from him and threw them over the fence.

“Why, June!”

“Not in MY garden. Them's stagger-weeds--they kill cows,” and she went off again.

“I reckon you better c-consult me 'bout weeds next time. I don't know much 'bout flowers, but I've knowed all my life 'bout WEEDS.” She laid so much emphasis on the word that Hale wondered for the moment if her words had a deeper meaning--but she went on:

“Ever' spring I have to watch the cows fer two weeks to keep 'em from eatin'--those weeds.” Her self-corrections were always made gravely now, and Hale consciously ignored them except when he had something to tell her that she ought to know. Everything, it seemed, she wanted to know.

“Do they really kill cows?”

June snapped her fingers: “Like that. But you just come on here,” she added with pretty imperiousness. “I want to axe--ask you some things--what's that?”

“Scarlet sage.”

“Scarlet sage,” repeated June. “An' that?”

“Nasturtium, and that's Oriental grass.”

“Nas-tur-tium, Oriental. An' what's that vine?”

“That comes from North Africa--they call it 'matrimonial vine.'”

“Whut fer?” asked June quickly.

“Because it clings so.” Hale smiled, but June saw none of his humour--the married people she knew clung till the finger of death unclasped them. She pointed to a bunch of tall tropical-looking plants with great spreading leaves and big green-white stalks.

“They're called Palmae Christi.”

“Whut?”

“That's Latin. It means 'Hands of Christ,'” said Hale with reverence. “You see how the leaves are spread out--don't they look like hands?'

“Not much,” said June frankly. “What's Latin?”

“Oh, that's a dead language that some people used a long, long time ago.”

“What do folks use it nowadays fer? Why don't they just say 'Hands o' Christ'?”

“I don't know,” he said helplessly, “but maybe you'll study Latin some of these days.” June shook her head.

“Gettin' YOUR language is a big enough job fer me,” she said with such quaint seriousness that Hale could not laugh. She looked up suddenly. “You been a long time git--gettin' over here.”

“Yes, and now you want to send me home before sundown.”

“I'm afeer--I'm afraid for you. Have you got a gun?” Hale tapped his breast-pocket.

“Always. What are you afraid of?”

“The Falins.” She clenched her hands.

“I'd like to SEE one o' them Falins tech ye,” she added fiercely, and then she gave a quick look at the sun.

“You better go now, Jack. I'm afraid fer you. Where's your horse?” Hale waved his hand.

“Down there. All right, little girl,” he said. “I ought to go, anyway.” And, to humour her, he started for the gate. There he bent to kiss her, but she drew back.

“I'm afraid of Dave,” she said, but she leaned on the gate and looked long at him with wistful eyes.

“Jack,” she said, and her eyes swam suddenly, “it'll most kill me--but I reckon you better not come over here much.” Hale made light of it all.

“Nonsense, I'm coming just as often as I can.” June smiled then.

“All right. I'll watch out fer ye.”

He went down the path, her eyes following him, and when he looked back from the spur he saw her sitting in the porch and watching that she might wave him farewell.

Hale could not go over to Lonesome Cove much that summer, for he was away from the mountains a good part of the time, and it was a weary, racking summer for June when he was not there. The step-mother was a stern taskmistress, and the girl worked hard, but no night passed that she did not spend an hour or more on her books, and by degrees she bribed and stormed Bub into learning his A, B, C's and digging at a blue-back spelling book. But all through the day there were times when she could play with the boy in the garden, and every afternoon, when it was not raining, she would slip away to a little ravine behind the cabin, where a log had fallen across a little brook, and there in the cool, sun-pierced shadows she would study, read and dream--with the water bubbling underneath and wood-thrushes singing overhead. For Hale kept her well supplied with books. He had given her children's books at first, but she outgrew them when the first love-story fell into her hands, and then he gave her novels--good, old ones and the best of the new ones, and they were to her what water is to a thing athirst. But the happy days were when Hale was there. She had a thousand questions for him to answer, whenever he came, about birds, trees and flowers and the things she read in her books. The words she could not understand in them she marked, so that she could ask their meaning, and it was amazing how her vocabulary increased. Moreover, she was always trying to use the new words she learned, and her speech was thus a quaint mixture of vernacular, self-corrections and unexpected words. Happening once to have a volume of Keats in his pocket, he read some of it to her, and while she could not understand, the music of the lines fascinated her and she had him leave that with her, too. She never tired hearing him tell of the places where he had been and the people he knew and the music and plays he had heard and seen. And when he told her that she, too, should see all those wonderful things some day, her deep eyes took fire and she dropped her head far back between her shoulders and looked long at the stars that held but little more wonder for her than the world of which he told. But each time he was there she grew noticeably shyer with him and never once was the love-theme between them taken up in open words. Hale was reluctant, if only because she was still such a child, and if he took her hand or put his own on her wonderful head or his arm around her as they stood in the garden under the stars--he did it as to a child, though the leap in her eyes and the quickening of his own heart told him the lie that he was acting, rightly, to her and to himself. And no more now were there any breaking-downs within her--there was only a calm faith that staggered him and gave him an ever-mounting sense of his responsibility for whatever might, through the part he had taken in moulding her life, be in store for her.

When he was not there, life grew a little easier for her in time, because of her dreams, the patience that was built from them and Hale's kindly words, the comfort of her garden and her books, and the blessed force of habit. For as time went on, she got consciously used to the rough life, the coarse food and the rude ways of her own people and her own home. And though she relaxed not a bit in her own dainty cleanliness, the shrinking that she felt when she first arrived home, came to her at longer and longer intervals. Once a week she went down to Uncle Billy's, where she watched the water-wheel dripping sun-jewels into the sluice, the kingfisher darting like a blue bolt upon his prey, and listening to the lullaby that the water played to the sleepy old mill--and stopping, both ways, to gossip with old Hon in her porch under the honeysuckle vines. Uncle Billy saw the change in her and he grew vaguely uneasy about her--she dreamed so much, she was at times so restless, she asked so many questions he could not answer, and she failed to ask so many that were on the tip of her tongue. He saw that while her body was at home, her thoughts rarely were; and it all haunted him with a vague sense that he was losing her. But old Hon laughed at him and told him he was an old fool and to “git another pair o' specs” and maybe he could see that the “little gal” was in love. This startled Uncle Billy, for he was so like a father to June that he was as slow as a father in recognizing that his child has grown to such absurd maturity. But looking back to the beginning--how the little girl had talked of the “furriner” who had come into Lonesome Cove all during the six months he was gone; how gladly she had gone away to the Gap to school, how anxious she was to go still farther away again, and, remembering all the strange questions she asked him about things in the outside world of which he knew nothing--Uncle Billy shook his head in confirmation of his own conclusion, and with all his soul he wondered about Hale--what kind of a man he was and what his purpose was with June--and of every man who passed his mill he never failed to ask if he knew “that ar man Hale” and what he knew. All he had heard had been in Hale's favour, except from young Dave Tolliver, the Red Fox or from any Falin of the crowd, which Hale had prevented from capturing Dave. Their statements bothered him--especially the Red Fox's evil hints and insinuations about Hale's purposes one day at the mill. The miller thought of them all the afternoon and all the way home, and when he sat down at his fire his eyes very naturally and simply rose to his old rifle over the door--and then he laughed to himself so loudly that old Hon heard him.

“Air you goin' crazy, Billy?” she asked. “Whut you studyin' 'bout?”

“Nothin'; I was jest a-thinkin' Devil Judd wouldn't leave a grease-spot of him.”

“You AIR goin' crazy--who's him?”

“Uh--nobody,” said Uncle Billy, and old Hon turned with a shrug of her shoulders--she was tired of all this talk about the feud.

All that summer young Dave Tolliver hung around Lonesome Cove. He would sit for hours in Devil Judd's cabin, rarely saying anything to June or to anybody, though the girl felt that she hardly made a move that he did not see, and while he disappeared when Hale came, after a surly grunt of acknowledgment to Hale's cheerful greeting, his perpetual espionage began to anger June. Never, however, did he put himself into words until Hale's last visit, when the summer had waned and it was nearly time for June to go away again to school. As usual, Dave had left the house when Hale came, and an hour after Hale was gone she went to the little ravine with a book in her hand, and there the boy was sitting on her log, his elbows dug into his legs midway between thigh and knee, his chin in his hands, his slouched hat over his black eyes--every line of him picturing angry, sullen dejection. She would have slipped away, but he heard her and lifted his head and stared at her without speaking. Then he slowly got off the log and sat down on a moss-covered stone.

“'Scuse me,” he said with elaborate sarcasm. “This bein' yo' school-house over hyeh, an' me not bein' a scholar, I reckon I'm in your way.”

“How do you happen to know hit's my school-house?” asked June quietly.

“I've seed you hyeh.”

“Jus' as I s'posed.”

“You an' HIM.”

“Jus' as I s'posed,” she repeated, and a spot of red came into each cheek. “But we didn't see YOU.” Young Dave laughed.

“Well, everybody don't always see me when I'm seein' them.”

“No,” she said unsteadily. “So, you've been sneakin' around through the woods a-spyin' on me--SNEAKIN' AN' SPYIN',” she repeated so searingly that Dave looked at the ground suddenly, picked up a pebble confusedly and shot it in the water.

“I had a mighty good reason,” he said doggedly. “Ef he'd been up to some of his furrin' tricks---” June stamped the ground.

“Don't you think I kin take keer o' myself?”

“No, I don't. I never seed a gal that could--with one o' them furriners.”

“Huh!” she said scornfully. “You seem to set a mighty big store by the decency of yo' own kin.” Dave was silent. “He ain't up to no tricks. An' whut do you reckon Dad 'ud be doin' while you was pertecting me?”

“Air ye goin' away to school?” he asked suddenly. June hesitated.

“Well, seein' as hit's none o' yo' business--I am.”

“Air ye goin' to marry him?”

“He ain't axed me.” The boy's face turned red as a flame.

“Ye air honest with me, an' now I'm goin' to be honest with you. You hain't never goin' to marry him.”

“Mebbe you think I'm goin' to marry YOU.” A mist of rage swept before the lad's eyes so that he could hardly see, but he repeated steadily:

“You hain't goin' to marry HIM.” June looked at the boy long and steadily, but his black eyes never wavered--she knew what he meant.

“An' he kept the Falins from killin' you,” she said, quivering with indignation at the shame of him, but Dave went on unheeding:

“You pore little fool! Do ye reckon as how he's EVER goin' to axe ye to marry him? Whut's he sendin' you away fer? Because you hain't good enough fer him! Whar's yo' pride? You hain't good enough fer him,” he repeated scathingly. June had grown calm now.

“I know it,” she said quietly, “but I'm goin' to try to be.”

Dave rose then in impotent fury and pointed one finger at her. His black eyes gleamed like a demon's and his voice was hoarse with resolution and rage, but it was Tolliver against Tolliver now, and June answered him with contemptuous fearlessness.

“YOU HAIN'T NEVER GOIN' TO MARRY HIM.”

“An' he kept the Falins from killin' ye.”

“Yes,” he retorted savagely at last, “an' I kept the Falins from killin' HIM,” and he stalked away, leaving June blanched and wondering.

It was true. Only an hour before, as Hale turned up the mountain that very afternoon at the mouth of Lonesome Cove, young Dave had called to him from the bushes and stepped into the road.

“You air goin' to court Monday?” he said.

“Yes,” said Hale.

“Well, you better take another road this time,” he said quietly. “Three o' the Falins will be waitin' in the lorrel somewhar on the road to lay-way ye.”

Hale was dumfounded, but he knew the boy spoke the truth.

“Look here,” he said impulsively, “I've got nothing against you, and I hope you've got nothing against me. I'm much obliged--let's shake hands!”

The boy turned sullenly away with a dogged shake of his head.

“I was beholden to you,” he said with dignity, “an' I warned you 'bout them Falins to git even with you. We're quits now.”

Hale started to speak--to say that the lad was not beholden to him--that he would as quickly have protected a Falin, but it would have only made matters worse. Moreover, he knew precisely what Dave had against him, and that, too, was no matter for discussion. So he said simply and sincerely:

“I'm sorry we can't be friends.”

“No,” Dave gritted out, “not this side o' Heaven--or Hell.”

XIX

And still farther into that far silence about which she used to dream at the base of the big Pine, went little June. At dusk, weary and travel-stained, she sat in the parlours of a hotel--a great gray columned structure of stone. She was confused and bewildered and her head ached. The journey had been long and tiresome. The swift motion of the train had made her dizzy and faint. The dust and smoke had almost stifled her, and even now the dismal parlours, rich and wonderful as they were to her unaccustomed eyes, oppressed her deeply. If she could have one more breath of mountain air!

The day had been too full of wonders. Impressions had crowded on her sensitive brain so thick and fast that the recollection of them was as through a haze. She had never been on a train before and when, as it crashed ahead, she clutched Hale's arm in fear and asked how they stopped it, Hale hearing the whistle blow for a station, said:

“I'll show you,” and he waved one hand out the window. And he repeated this trick twice before she saw that it was a joke. All day he had soothed her uneasiness in some such way and all day he watched her with an amused smile that was puzzling to her. She remembered sadly watching the mountains dwindle and disappear, and when several of her own people who were on the train were left at way-stations, it seemed as though all links that bound her to her home were broken. The face of the country changed, the people changed in looks, manners and dress, and she shrank closer to Hale with an increasing sense of painful loneliness. These level fields and these farm-houses so strangely built, so varied in colour were the “settlemints,” and these people so nicely dressed, so clean and fresh-looking were “furriners.” At one station a crowd of school-girls had got on board and she had watched them with keen interest, mystified by their incessant chatter and gayety. And at last had come the big city, with more smoke, more dust, more noise, more confusion--and she was in HIS world. That was the thought that comforted her--it was his world, and now she sat alone in the dismal parlours while Hale was gone to find his sister--waiting and trembling at the ordeal, close upon her, of meeting Helen Hale.

Below, Hale found his sister and her maid registered, and a few minutes later he led Miss Hale into the parlour. As they entered June rose without advancing, and for a moment the two stood facing each other--the still roughly clad, primitive mountain girl and the exquisite modern woman--in an embarrassment equally painful to both.

“June, this is my sister.”

At a loss what to do, Helen Hale simply stretched out her hand, but drawn by June's timidity and the quick admiration and fear in her eyes, she leaned suddenly forward and kissed her. A grateful flush overspread the little girl's features and the pallor that instantly succeeded went straight-way to the sister's heart.

“You are not well,” she said quickly and kindly. “You must go to your room at once. I am going to take care of you--you are MY little sister now.”

June lost the subtlety in Miss Hale's emphasis, but she fell with instant submission under such gentle authority, and though she could say nothing, her eyes glistened and her lips quivered, and without looking to Hale, she followed his sister out of the room. Hale stood still. He had watched the meeting with apprehension and now, surprised and grateful, he went to Helen's parlour and waited with a hopeful heart. When his sister entered, he rose eagerly:

“Well--” he said, stopping suddenly, for there were tears of vexation, dismay and genuine distress on his sister's face.

“Oh, Jack,” she cried, “how could you! How could you!”

Hale bit his lips, turned and paced the room. He had hoped too much and yet what else could he have expected? His sister and June knew as little about each other and each other's lives as though they had occupied different planets. He had forgotten that Helen must be shocked by June's inaccuracies of speech and in a hundred other ways to which he had become accustomed. With him, moreover, the process had been gradual and, moreover, he had seen beneath it all. And yet he had foolishly expected Helen to understand everything at once. He was unjust, so very wisely he held himself in silence.

“Where is her baggage, Jack?” Helen had opened her trunk and was lifting out the lid. “She ought to change those dusty clothes at once. You'd better ring and have it sent right up.”

“No,” said Hale, “I will go down and see about it myself.”

He returned presently--his face aflame--with June's carpet-bag.

“I believe this is all she has,” he said quietly.

In spite of herself Helen's grief changed to a fit of helpless laughter and, afraid to trust himself further, Hale rose to leave the room. At the door he was met by the negro maid.

“Miss Helen,” she said with an open smile, “Miss June say she don't want NUTTIN'.” Hale gave her a fiery look and hurried out. June was seated at a window when he went into her room with her face buried in her arms. She lifted her head, dropped it, and he saw that her eyes were red with weeping. “Are you sick, little girl?” he asked anxiously. June shook her head helplessly.

“You aren't homesick, are you?”

“No.” The answer came very faintly.

“Don't you like my sister?” The head bowed an emphatic “Yes--yes.”

“Then what is the matter?”

“Oh,” she said despairingly, between her sobs, “she--won't--like--me. I never--can--be--like HER.”

Hale smiled, but her grief was so sincere that he leaned over her and with a tender hand soothed her into quiet. Then he went to Helen again and he found her overhauling dresses.

“I brought along several things of different sizes and I am going to try at any rate. Oh,” she added hastily, “only of course until she can get some clothes of her own.”

“Sure,” said Hale, “but--” His sister waved one hand and again Hale kept still.

June had bathed her eyes and was lying down when Helen entered, and she made not the slightest objection to anything the latter proposed. Straightway she fell under as complete subjection to her as she had done to Hale. Without a moment's hesitation she drew off her rudely fashioned dress and stood before Helen with the utmost simplicity--her beautiful arms and throat bare and her hair falling about them with the rich gold of a cloud at an autumn sunset. Dressed, she could hardly breathe, but when she looked at herself in the mirror, she trembled. Magic transformation! Apparently the chasm between the two had been bridged in a single instant. Helen herself was astonished and again her heart warmed toward the girl, when a little later, she stood timidly under Hale's scrutiny, eagerly watching his face and flushing rosy with happiness under his brightening look. Her brother had not exaggerated--the little girl was really beautiful. When they went down to the dining-room, there was another surprise for Helen Hale, for June's timidity was gone and to the wonder of the woman, she was clothed with an impassive reserve that in herself would have been little less than haughtiness and was astounding in a child. She saw, too, that the change in the girl's bearing was unconscious and that the presence of strangers had caused it. It was plain that June's timidity sprang from her love of Hale--her fear of not pleasing him and not pleasing her, his sister, and plain, too, that remarkable self-poise was little June's to command. At the table June kept her eyes fastened on Helen Hale. Not a movement escaped her and she did nothing that was not done by one of the others first. She said nothing, but if she had to answer a question, she spoke with such care and precision that she almost seemed to be using a foreign language. Miss Hale smiled but with inward approval, and that night she was in better spirits.

“Jack,” she said, when he came to bid her good-night, “I think we'd better stay here a few days. I thought of course you were exaggerating, but she is very, very lovely. And that manner of hers--well, it passes my understanding. Just leave everything to me.”

Hale was very willing to do that. He had all trust in his sister's judgment, he knew her dislike of interference, her love of autocratic supervision, so he asked no questions, but in grateful relief kissed her good-night.